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The number of people in the Kingston area seeking treatment for eating disorders is up 40% from three years ago, according to a local health clinic.

The group mainly responsible for driving up those numbers, according to Dr. Susan Buchanan of the Hotel Dieu Hospital’s Adult Eating Disorders Clinic, are post-secondary students.

Some of those students arrive at school with a pre-existing eating disorder, she said, but not all.

“It’s also a risky time for the development of eating disorder symptoms: when they’re going away from home, increased stress,” Buchanan said.

“Those symptoms are a way of coping with anxiety, depression and mood issues.”

She figures that students comprise 40% of the clinic’s clients.

Like Buchanan, social worker Carrie Watson, whose private practice focuses on treating those with eating disorders, has seen an increase in the number of students coming through her doors.

“They’re in a time of transition,” she said. “They’ve left home for the first time, they’re concerned about academics, they’re looking at a grim job market,” she said. “The pressure is just so much worse, the stress so much higher. I think that leads to trouble.”

There isn’t one particular cause for someone to develop an eating disorder, Watson explained.

“I think it’s a mix of things: like the pressure to be thin, the pressure on women in particular to be thin in our culture; media images,” she said, adding that there are likely many more people with the problem who have never come forward.

“Family dynamics can play a role; dieting can play a role; certain sports, certain activities that have a focus on body appearance have a big role to play.”

Both Watson and Buchanan feel that there are many others suffering from eating disorders who just haven’t come forward.

But there is another age group emerging with eating disorders, Buchanan said.

“We see women from 18 (years of age) and up, and we have a growing population of women who are 40 and up,” she said.

“And these are women who have been struggling with an eating disorder for a long time because there’s a lot of embarrassment and shame with it. They haven’t come forward in the past, and now they’re dealing with some of the health consequences.”

Today’s culture also contributes to the prevalence of the problem, Buchanan said.

“We have a culture that is very much sort of in your face all the time now,” she said.

People are inundated through the Internet and social media with the need to be thin, Buchanan feels.

“It’s almost with us 24 hours a day now. Before, we used to talk about, ‘Oh, the magazines are there, but just don’t buy the magazines,’ or ‘Fashion Television is there, but just don’t watch that.’ But now we carry media with us all the time, so that’s the hard part,” she said.

While society has made strides in accepting differences in ethnicity and gender, Buchanan feels “we still have a lot of bias against body size and shape.

“One of the confusing messages we’re getting in public health care is anti-fat campaigns, anti-obesity campaigns, so really bringing that into the schools and into the culture,” she said.

“So when that message is overplayed, people become anti-fat stigmatized as well. So they internalize it to say, ‘I can’t be overweight, I can’t gain weight,’ even if they’re underweight.”

And getting treatment can be trying. For example, the Hotel Dieu outpatient clinic — which also includes a registered dietitian, nurse practitioner, occupational therapist and social worker — is only open three days a week.

“So, if people have a more acute eating disorder, they actually have to leave the Southeast (Local Health Integration Network) for treatment,” Buchanan said.

“In Ontario, there are only 20 in-patient beds, and we estimate there’s about 80,000 people with an eating disorder.”

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental health illness, she added. For example, those suffering from anorexia die up to 25 years earlier than others.

The clinic has applied to the Southeast LHIN for funding to make the clinic a full-time operation with a day treatment program.

Today (Friday) marks the end of Eating Disorder Awareness week, and Watson feels it’s a good start.

“When we talk about it, it reduces stigma,” she said.

“And I think that’s important to reduce stigma about eating disorders in general. It’s a time to accept and celebrate the diversity of body shapes and body sizes, and to provide information to the general public and also for people who are suffering to act and help.”